


Yahrzeit

by areyouarealmonster



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Jewish Sara Lance, jewish gary green, kind of?, pre S3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-06-05 07:37:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15165821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/areyouarealmonster/pseuds/areyouarealmonster
Summary: Sara and Gary meet pre s3 at Shabbat services on the anniversary of Laurel's death. Wine and ice cream ensue.See also; the reason Sara has Gary's Time Bureau key card.See also; Sara really misses her sister.





	Yahrzeit

Sara hasn’t been to Shabbat services since, well, since Laurel’s last yahrzeit. Laurel was always the more religious one growing up; Sara skipped more High Holy Days services than she attended, while Laurel taught Sunday school and went on youth group retreats. 

 

Temple Beit Shalom in Star City doesn’t feel like home—never felt like home—but it feels like  _ Laurel _ , and that’s more or less the same thing. Everyone knows her here, but they know her because she’s Laurel’s sister, because they knew and loved Laurel. 

 

Sara used to resent that, just a bit, but now it just makes her miss her sister even more. To be around people who knew her, who loved her, who miss her—Sara needs this. Once a year, she needs this. 

 

Especially right now, when she hasn’t seen her Legends in a while. When they’ve scattered around the country. Sure, they text, they keep in touch, but it’s not the same. She thinks this might hurt less if she had them around. Even Ray moved to Silicon Valley instead of back to Star City, which sucks because he used to go to Temple Beit Shalom when he lived here, and Sara would have at least had a friend here, for this. 

 

It might be easier, too, if her parents were here, but her mom won’t come back to Star, not even for this, and her dad hasn’t stepped foot in a synagogue since well before the divorce. 

 

So it’s just Sara, alone, standing up near the end of the service to say, “Laurel Lance, my sister,” when the Rabbi gestures for her to speak the name of her departed loved one. It’s just Sara, alone, mumbling through the Mourner’s Kaddish, trying desperately to follow along with the transliteration. She’s much better at Arabic than she ever was at Hebrew. 

 

She lingers after the service, setting up camp in the foyer, munching on challah and sipping at the too-sweet wine in tiny glasses. It’s a receiving of sorts, and people come up to her to tell her how much they miss Laurel too, how much Laurel did for this city, for the community, for them. 

 

Sara needs this, she needs it. Most of the year she doesn’t let herself think about it, doesn’t let herself remember that she has—or, recently, that she once had—a time ship, that she could go back. Because she can’t. 

 

Once a year, though, she does what she knows Laurel would want: she mourns with Laurel’s community. 

 

Fuck, she misses her sister. 

 

Most of the congregation has cleared out by the time the guy approaches her. She’s seen him waiting; not in a creepy way, just in a bit of an awkward way. He looks familiar but she’s not sure why, not until he comes up to her at the end and introduces himself. 

 

“Miss Lance, hi, I’m uh, I’m Gary Green.” He shakes her hand, and she notes that his hand is soft, his grip on the loose side but not dead-fishy enough to be weird. “I’m, uh—” he leans down, conspiratorially— “I work for the Time Bureau.” He straightens up and clears his throat. 

 

A Time Bureau agent, interesting. She must have seen him in the surveillance she did of the Bureau offices. Sara’s alarm bells aren’t going off, so she knows this isn’t official business. He’s just a congregant, offering his sympathies. Even if he is here on business, though, she could take him. He’s a large guy, but Ray and Mick are bigger, and she’s taken down both of them easily at times. Also, he looks like kind of a dweeb. 

 

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Gary Green continues. “She was…” He trails off, his eyes starry and bright. “She was an amazing woman.” 

 

Sara sniffs. She’s not gonna cry, she’s not gonna cry, not for this dorky-looking Time Bureau agent. “She was.” She takes a deep breath. “I miss her every day,” she admits. It would be nice to blame her loose tongue on the wine, but she knows it’s something else. 

 

If this Gary Green works for the Time Bureau, then he knows who she is and what she’s done, more so than anyone here, more so than anyone else in Star City—well, except for Team Arrow, who she can’t face right now. 

 

Felicity isn’t even here, she’s putting out fires with Ollie. She texted her condolences, and left Sara all alone. 

 

Sara doesn’t want to be alone, and she especially doesn’t want to be alone with someone who doesn’t know any of it, any of what she’s been through. She doesn’t want to be with someone who doesn’t know how hard it is to not just travel back in time and save Laurel. 

 

Gary Green is watching her, his gaze full of sympathy and kindness, and she knows this might be just what she needs. 

 

“You got booze at your place?” Sara asks. 

 

His eyes widen. “Uh, yes.” 

 

“Ice cream?” 

 

He nods, short and fast. 

 

“You gonna invite me over, Mr. Time Bureau Agent?” 

 

He does, stumbling over his words, but he manages to get a full sentence together. Eventually. 

 

Sara sits in the passenger seat of his car—an old, light blue Toyota Camry with soft fabric seats and a smattering of old receipts and discarded energy bar wrappings that he hastily cleared out from the passenger seat and dumped in the back. Gary Green talks over the radio, a lot of rambly nothings that she half-tunes out. 

 

The city rolls past, the city that she knows like the back of her hand, like the shape of Laurel’s smile, like the sound of her sister’s laugh. 

 

They’re settled in his apartment, on his comfy couch, with wine that isn’t sickly sweet and bowls of ice cream that are just the right amount of sweet, when he asks: “How did you do it?” 

 

Sara polishes off her wine glass before she responds, leaning forward over the cold bowl in her lap to grab the bottle and pour herself a refill. “How did I not go back in time and save Laurel?” she clarifies. 

 

He nods. “I mean, of course, that’s against the rules—Bureau rules, and probably your rules—but you were the captain of the Waverider. You could make your own rules—you know, in theory. I don’t, uh, I don’t think you should make your own rules, but you  _ could _ have.” 

 

She’s asked herself this enough times, with varying responses every time, but this time what comes to mind is: “Laurel wouldn’t want me to.” She thinks back to the Spear of Destiny, to the echo of Laurel, to sitting on a couch much like this once with another glass of wine. “She didn’t want me to.” 

 

Gary perks up at that. “Did you travel to talk to her before she died?” There’s a hint of judgement in his voice, but there’s understanding as well. 

 

“Not technically,” she says, and explains the Spear of Destiny. 

 

“That’s so cool,” he says, wistfully, when she finishes. “You got to wield a magical object and save the world.” 

 

Sara rolls her eyes. “Not the point, Gary.” 

 

“Right, sorry.” He puts his empty ice cream bowl down on the table and turns his body to face her, curling one leg up under him, draping an arm over the back of the couch. “Was it really Laurel, that you talked to?” 

 

Sara uncrosses her legs, putting her ice cream bowl on the table as well so she can lean back against the arm and hug her knees up against her chest. “I don’t know,” she admits. “It was  _ a _ reality, I think. I...I have to believe it was real, because otherwise I’m not sure I wouldn’t eventually break and do it.” 

 

“You don’t have the Waverider anymore,” Gary reminds her. 

 

He’s right, but she knows that wouldn’t stop her. There are ways around that, and if worst comes to worst she can always just break into the Time Bureau and steal her ship back. “I know,” is all she says. 

 

They talk and drink until long past the witching hour, until that buzzing silence after the commotion of a Friday night falls on Star City. They’ve finished three bottles of wine, and Gary, at least, is drunk. Sara, who definitely had more than Gary did, is fine. She can feel the buzz, warm and heady, as she stands up to leave. 

 

“You can stay,” Gary offers. “Take my bed.” He gestures back to the hallway, to the slightly open door on the other side of the bathroom. “I’m good right here.” He lies down to prove his point, pulling the blanket down off the back and resting his head on a throw pillow. 

 

“You’re still wearing your glasses,” Sara says. He pulls them off, barely moving, and tosses them unceremoniously onto the coffee table. She’s pretty sure he’s asleep before they hit, clattering and skittering a bit, and luckily stopping just before they can call over the far edge. 

 

Well, she might as well stay and not have to call a cab at this hour of the night. She pokes her way into Gary’s room, nosing around a bit. His bedside table is a pile of tabletop role playing game rule books, and his desk is covered in action figures—she sees a Black Canary one and picks it up, running her fingers over the hard plastic blond waves of hair, swiping against figurine-Laurel’s cheek with the pad of her thumb. 

 

It aches—in a good or bad way, Sara isn’t sure—that other people remember Laurel like this. Sara has this figurine, too, but it’s surreal to see it in someone else’s home, in some else’s treasured possessions, for a completely different reason than why she has it. 

 

She takes the figure over to the bed with her, setting it on top of  _ Xanathar’s Guide to Everything _ —the RPG book on top of the stack—and facing plastic-Laurel at the bed. 

 

“Watch over me, okay, Laurel?” Sara asks. She knows she should feel sheepish but it’s comforting, to at least have a part of her sister with her. 

 

* * *

 

She wakes up before Gary in the morning, a little groggy but not too hungover. As she goes to move his Laurel figure back onto his desk, she notices a laminated bookmark sticking out of the RPG guide the Black Canary had been on top of. She pulls it out—Gary’s key card for the Bureau.

 

Sara sticks it in her pocket, presses a kiss to the head of the action figure as she sets it back on the desk, and slips out of the apartment, leaving Gary still snoring on the couch behind her. 

**Author's Note:**

> this is all vee's fault. 
> 
> come say hi to me on tumblr @jewishgarygreen.


End file.
